en workers at Hearst Magazine in Birmingham, Alabama, staged a walkout recently in protest of bad faith negotiations.
These workers successfully voted to unionize in 2020, joining up with the Writer’s Guild of America East, but claim that, since then, they have been stuck in “negotiation hell” with their employer, who has consistently and intentionally made things difficult for the unionize workers; in fact, despite almost 3 years since organizing, they still don’t even have so much as a first contract, due to the non-cooperative company.
“Really pretty gross stuff,” Jacob said when discussing the situation on a live broadcast last month. “So the union said this walkout was to show the company that ‘we’re serious about this, we’re serious about getting a fair contract; you need to take us seriously!’”
The union workers went on to tell Deadline that they are “seeking fair wage increases, better severance, and strong anti-harassment protections, among other demands.” However, it hasn’t been made clear what in particular among these demands is perhaps causing the holdup for the employer.
We want to give a shoutout to journalist William Thornton as he wrote a piece on the situation for AL.com and actually went to the trouble of interviewing the workers themselves, rather than just talking with the bosses as is typical in the media. Thornton found that 20 or more workers were involved with the walkout, which included employees from other magazine companies who joined the protest in solidarity. Read Thornton’s coverage of the walkout here: https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2023/03/hearst-union-workers-stage-birmingham-walkout-writers-guild-of-america-slams-anti-union-campaign.html
And for Jacob and Adam’s full discussion on the protest on the show, watch the full video on YouTube: